David Moore's primary interests are in literary and cultural interactions in the 20th and 21st century Black Atlantic world, most notably in African/African-American connections — all seen in what he terms a global or “Afro-planetary” framework. Significant allied interests include translation, postcolonial studies, the post-Soviet sphere, the social history of texts, and globalization writ large.

David Moore has published widely on these topics in journals such as PMLA, Diaspora, Transition, Research in African Literatures, Callaloo, Genre, the Journal of Anthropological Research, Profession, the Slavic and East European Journal, Resources for American Literary Study; the Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal; and Accounting, Organizations and Society. He is co-editor with Martin Bernal of Black Athena Writes Back (Duke University Press, 2001). Larger projects in process include a fourteen-language presentation of the translations of Ferdinand Oyono’s 1956 novel Une Vie de Boy, and two editions of historical writings by Langston Hughes: an expanded edition of A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia, and From Harlem to Johannesburg – Hughes's correspondence with four pioneering black South African authors.